Supporting NAFTA Was the Kiss of Death for Democrats --Why Dems Should Think Twice About Voting for TPPShe then discusses House Speaker Tom Foley:
As President Obama twists arms to pass “fast track,” a look back at the Democrats who helped Clinton win the bloody trade battle of 1993.
It’s serious flashback time for those involved in the 1993 debate over the North America Free Trade Agreement. With the “fast track” trade vote expected as early as this Thursday, a Democratic president is once again twisting arms and dangling rewards in a desperate effort to muster votes for a corporate-driven trade deal. And just like in 1993, the vote will be one of those rare bipartisan moments in Washington. The word is only about a dozen members remain on the fence, most of them Democrats. The president is reportedly putting the tightest screws on members of the Congressional Black Caucus. After the NAFTA wheeling and dealing began in earnest back in 1993, it didn’t take long to push enough Dems off the fence. All these years later, NAFTA remains the basic blueprint for every U.S. trade deal.
Let me skip over NAFTA’s failure to deliver on promises for workers, the environment, human rights, etc. These have all been extensively documented over the years by the Institute for Policy Studies, and many others across the continent. President Obama acknowledged its flaws himself when he made a campaign trail promise to renegotiate the deal. Instead, let’s take a look at what individual members got by helping to ram the pact through Congress. Did their support for the big business lobby’s dream deal ensure a glittering political career?
Starting at the top: Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley sided with the White House and against most of the House Democrats, including Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. In his 30-year political career, that controversial move stood out enough for the New York Times to mention it in Foley’s obituary. A year after the NAFTA vote, the obit noted, “Mr. Foley became the first speaker since the Civil War to be defeated for re-election in his own district.”What about all the Clinton White House promises of special safeguards that would shield members from disastrous consequences for their constituents?
Ouch. While Foley’s defeat can’t be attributed to a single factor, his decision to side with the corporate lobby on NAFTA certainly didn’t prevent his electoral humiliation either.
In a detailed 2001 report following up on the NAFTA deals, Public Citizen concluded that “systematically, the White House promises of special safeguards for U.S. farm commodities, bridges and more remained unfulfilled. Exceptions were several meaningless promises, such as photographs with the president, and one campaign fund-raising event.”"Photographs with the president." Sounds like those rides on Air Force One that Obama is offering, as he flies to Germany to meet with the G7:
Inside US Trade: Four House Dems Supporting TPA To Accompany Obama On G7 TripApparently Himes was included as a reward for a very recent switch:
Four House Democrats who have publicly announced or signaled their support for a pending Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill will travel with President Obama on Air Force One to attend the G7 summit taking place June 7-8 in Germany, according to a White House official. ...
They are Reps. Jim Himes (D-CT), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and Mike Quigley (D-IL), the official said.
Of that group, Himes was the most recent member to announce his support for the TPA bill, having done so on June 3.I hope those plane rides are worth those House seats; some TPP Democrats will lose theirs — just as many NAFTA Democrats lost back in that day. Anderson again:
One of these unfulfilled promises targeted textile and apparel state members. ...Anderson mentions others, such as Rep. Bill Sarpalius of Texas, Rep. David Price of North Carolina, and Rep. Lewis Payne Jr of Virginia. These men and more believed the President's empty promises of protection, voted with the money that wanted NAFTA to pass, and then were cast out of office.
Rep. Clete Donald Johnson, Jr. was one of the targets of that empty promise. After voting for NAFTA, the Georgia Democrat got demolished in 1994, losing by a margin of more than 30 percent. A few years later, Clinton offered Johnson a consolation prize: a post as chief U.S. trade negotiator for textiles, a sector in rapid decline due to low-wage foreign competition.
“Members of Congress should know better than to trust an exiting president’s promises of political cover or to rely on vote-yes-now-goodies-later deals for voting ‘yes’ on such a controversial, career-defining issue as Fast Track,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “Our research of scores of deals over the past 20 years shows no matter who the president or congressional leadership is, almost all of the promises made in the heat of a trade vote go unfulfilled, and representatives who vote ‘yes’ are repeatedly left in political peril.”If you remember the broken promises of the 2008 campaign, you know how cheap a president's words are. Office-holders, trust the president to "have our back" at your peril.
Democrats Frustrated by Unions’ Cash Freeze Over ‘Fast Track’You can read further if you like, but the rest of the article seems like a "placed piece" attempting to shame unions into opening up their purses. I'd read it only of you want to see what "placed pieces" sound like.
One of Democrats’ best team players on the campaign finance front is playing hardball this cycle, withholding campaign cash over a package of trade bills being debated in Congress.
The AFL-CIO, along with some public sector unions, announced a campaign finance freeze in March. Unions hoped the threat of withholding contributions would scare Democratic lawmakers out of supporting President Barack Obama’s Trade Promotion Authority, or “fast track,” to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a trade agreement labor groups say would hurt manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
But instead, the freeze is frustrating and alienating plenty of House Democrats, many of whom say they are being punished even though they have been critical of the issue.